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The Lost World of The Cricketer

I did promise another glimpse into the lost world of the nineteen-seventies, as represented in the pages of The Cricketer, so here – true to my word – is a poem from the Spring Annual of April 1975.

The annual contains two poems – one, by the statistician Irving Rosenwater, is a response to the battering that England had taken over the Winter in Australia, and begins “Hammond! Thou shouldst be living at this hour” – the other is this, by one N.F. Bell (slightly unfortunate initials in the circumstances). I imagine the last line is meant to come as a surprise, which I suppose it does. Curiously, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it anthologised.